Clearing Out Your Busy Schedule: For Whom The Alarm Clock Tolls | The Happiness Lab

Key Takeaway

Combat time famine by deliberately protecting your free time, even in small increments. Trade money for time whenever possible—hire help for disliked tasks, cut your commute, get takeout—then spend that reclaimed time connecting with others or simply being idle. Research shows that feeling time-poor is worse for happiness than unemployment, but you can boost well-being dramatically by treating time as more valuable than money and being intentional about how you use the moments you save.

Episode Overview

Dr. Laurie Santos explores the science of time affluence versus time famine, interviewing idleness advocate Tom Hodgkinson and Harvard researcher Ashley Whillans. The episode reveals how our modern obsession with productivity and busyness damages happiness, relationships, and even our ability to help others, while offering practical strategies to reclaim time and live more intentionally.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Clearing Out Your Busy Schedule: For Whom The Alarm Clock Tolls | The Happiness Lab from The Happiness Lab. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hey Happiness Lab listeners, we're cruising through our special series on spring cleaning your happiness and we're continuing our deep dive into the Happiness Lab archive to find well-being boosting insights that you might have missed. This week's classic episode takes on cleaning up one of the messiest, most cluttered parts of our lives, our schedules. schedules. schedules. Ever had a week when it felt like you didn't have a single moment of downtime? When it felt like your calendar was overflowing with endless meetings and to-dos? to-dos? to-dos? Social scientists Social scientists Social scientists have a word for that awful feeling.

They call it time famine and studies show that time famine can make you miserable. But what would it look like to spring clean your schedule? To carve out time to wander around, to chat with friends, to think about nothing in particular, or even to take an afternoon nap? That is what I explore in this throwback Happiness Lab episode. So get ready to clean up those schedules and to break free from the tyranny of time in today's throwback episode, which is coming up right after the break.

Looking back in my diary, Wednesday, February 5th, 2020 was a fairly ordinary day. day. day. And by fairly ordinary, I mean to say that my day was absolutely packed to the brim. brim. brim. Which makes sense because I don't just have one amazing job, I have lots of them. them. them. I'm a professor and a research scientist. I run one of Yale's residential colleges, which means I have over 400 students to take care of all the time. the time. the time. I travel a bunch for public lectures to spread the science of happiness.

I'm a manager to all my amazing staff, a colleague to my science friends, and now I'm a podcaster, too. So, how do I keep track of all these different roles? different roles? different roles? My planner. My planner. My planner. It's a small red notebook that I carry with me everywhere. It's where I write out every single commitment I have, including the time it starts and the time it ends. My planner is like a precious friend. It helps me keep track of what I need to do every single day.

And so, I'm now looking in my planner at the page for Wednesday, February 5th, 2020, 2020, 2020, which, as usual, was completely packed. On that day, I had some podcast stuff to do at specific times, three different student meetings, a staff meeting, and an important department talk. department talk. department talk. After which, I wrote in very decisive, all caps lettering, 3:45 p.m., leave immediately. immediately. immediately. That was a note to remind myself that I needed to get out of that department talk a little early in order to make it to the airport for my flight to DC that night.

night. night. That one was a very, very hard stop. But on this particular busy day, my morning got to begin with a really exciting start. exciting start. exciting start. 8:00 a.m., interview with Tom Hodgkinson, one of my personal heroes. I'm here, but I can only hear you very faintly. I've admired Tom and his work for years. Very, very quiet. I had scheduled Tom's interview for a whole hour in my calendar, but with so, so much to ask him, I was worried I wouldn't have enough time.

And by this point, we were already 10 minutes into our time together, and Tom couldn't hear me. We tinkered with the mics and checked the phone connection. I kept asking, "Tom, is my voice louder now?" I'm afraid not, no. As the time ticked away, I felt my stress levels rising. It was already really difficult to find a long enough slot for this interview. And so, I mean, should we push through and risk me being late for all the rest of the stuff that day? Or should I try to reschedule for god knows when?

I was starting to freak out. And then suddenly Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. Tom [clears throat] could finally hear me. Which meant the interview I was most looking forward to this season could begin. begin. begin. So, what was the topic I was so anxious to jump into with Tom? So, talk to me about your history of becoming an idler. Like, what drove you to that? Talk about kind of why you decided to become more idle. I think I was born fairly idle. I always had a strong will towards idling.

Yep, idling. Yep, idling. Yep, idling. It's a pretty foreign concept, at least for me. for me. for me. I tend to fill my day to the brim. Mostly with meaningful and interesting things. things. things. I always thought that was what I was supposed to do. But it's gotten to the point where my calendar is now so packed that I sometimes feel like I'm drowning in all the stuff I have to do. Maybe you can relate. But as we'll see in this episode, if we really want to improve our happiness, we need to learn to do, well, a lot less.

Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? happy? happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. Alarm clock. That's what a horrible invention. I mean, it's a horrible way to start the day. Get out of bed.

Come on. You're lazy. You're never going to get anywhere. Tom is obsessed with clocks because he absolutely despises them. In his book, How to Be Idle, Tom tells his readers that to be happier, they need to throw away their alarm clocks. I'm not one of those people who sort of, you know, leaps out of bed the moment my eyes open. And go, "Yeah, I can't wait to get on with my day, you know." There's quite a lovely in-betweeny stage, in between wake and sleep, when you're sort of half conscious of your dreams.

I think it's that's a lovely state to be in. And a slower transition from sleep to wake, I think is civilized. These days clocks are everywhere. From our nightstands to our laptops to our wrists. It's easy to forget that watching the minutes of the day tick by is actually a new development. In medieval times, to an extent they were masters of their own time. So, they could sort of do a bit of weaving, have a nap, go into the vegetable garden, do a bit more weaving, go to church, and so on.

Life back then was sometimes brutal. But Tom thinks our pre-industrial ancestors enjoyed something that we've given up. given up. given up. A complete disregard for what hour it is. is. is. For most of human history, it was pretty hard to know the precise time. All medieval folks had was the position of the sun. Well, that and the bell would signal the end of the kind of the shift in the fields or whatever. whatever. whatever. The chimes from the church tower meant that it was time to put down your tools.

Time to assemble together for worship or a meal. a meal. a meal. Time to think of something other than work. work. work. That is until the Industrial Revolution kicked in. kicked in. kicked in. The system changed, you became a factory worker, the capitalist bought huge amounts of machinery and invested in it, and they had to keep this machinery going well, 24/7 ideally. So, the people were told life's not about working at home when you feel like it, you know, time kind of it weirdly become this sort of a like a a sort of a tyrant.

Tom is like a resistance fighter, at war with this tyrannical concept of time. And his primary weapon in the struggle is idling. is idling. is idling. Idling is the act of loafing. Taking time to do nothing in particular. Think long lunches, midday naps, tea time. Taking the scenic route, getting lost for no reason at all. Daydreaming. Daydreaming. Daydreaming. Hanging with friends at the pub. Long happy conversations that run well past the time we probably should have gone to bed. Tom encourages all of these. His books are manifestos against the cult of productivity that many of us grew up with.

When you're not working, when you're reflecting, when you're walking around the groves with your friends and talking about art and love and philosophy and ideas, that's when you're really living. And if we overwork, then you neglect that very important part of life. I first learned of Tom's work back in the early 2000s. When I myself had just started to neglect all these important parts of life. life. life. At the time I was an untenured assistant professor, working all hours to get papers out and my lab up and running.

I had fully subscribed to the philosophy that my generation inherited back from the days of the industrial revolution. That productivity is king. The idea of spending long hours walking around a grove with friends talking about art and philosophy, I mean, that seemed incredibly foreign, almost unattainable. unattainable. unattainable. But if I was being honest, it also sounded kind of amazing. I think it's one of the reasons I was first drawn to Tom's books. To devote a good portion of each day or each week to idling is actually very, very good for you, for your health, for your mental health, for your physical health, for the health of your friends.

That doesn't mean to say that you don't work or you don't enjoy working. In fact, idlers would probably like to find something they would like to do anyway and make it into their work. The problem, according to Tom, is when the urge to work makes us a slave to the clock. When we completely lose any free time whatsoever. So we're all constantly looking at our watches like the white rabbit in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Late, late, I'm very late. Completely unable to live in the moment.

You know, I I read these things on Twitter saying, "Hey guys, sorry, but you know, if you're 26 and you're not working crazy hours, you're not going to get anywhere." I think that's so wrong. Work in itself is not good. And that's one idea that I want to fight is this idea that because any kind of hard work is morally good. Tom worries that our modern ethos of productivity is turning all of us into unfortunate workhorses, the kind that great literature has long warned us about.

In Animal Farm, we have the example of the horse Boxer, who when faced with a problem says, "Work harder. Work harder. Work until he works himself into an early grave." He's taken off to the glue factory. factory. factory. [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] Now, that to me is a That's a warning. Overwork causes stress, heart disease. It obviously is bad for family life, bad for your relationships. And who is it good for? For you? For your ego? For your boss? To make more money? You know, when you start to analyze these concepts, like the work ethic, they start to dissolve.

So, I'm trying to look at things from a different point of view. view. view. Tom tries to live his entire life in accordance with these beliefs, but many people find his suggestions deeply challenging. challenging. challenging. At times, his ideas can sound like a radical religious ideology. It's not laziness to create free time for yourself. It's actually a mark of nobility. It brings you closer to to the gods, actually, because when you start to realize where this stuff comes from, it comes from the people in power.

I don't want to sound too Marxist, but it's coming from the owners of capital. It comes from the owners of the means of production. They want to enslave us. We've got to break free of these chains. William Blake, he talked about the mind-forged manacles, okay? We've created a situation with our own minds, and we can use our own minds to to break free of these manacles. As I talked to Tom for this interview and reflected on how stressed I'd been about my schedule just minutes before, I got really sad.

It's now been over a decade since I first encountered Tom's work, and I'm still not listening to his advice. If anything, I've become even more trapped in those mind-forged manacles he talks about, that ethos of productivity at all cost. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm really grateful for all the career opportunities that keep me so busy. Especially this podcast, which I absolutely adore. absolutely adore. absolutely adore. But I'm also really, really overworked. I don't admit it much, but I feel overwhelmed all the time. I can't remember the last time I took a real vacation.

real vacation. real vacation. Or had even a moment to just be idle for the sake of being idle. Let alone trips across a grove talking about philosophy. about philosophy. about philosophy. There's not a single entry in my red planner that says, "Just do nothing." And all of this makes me feel incredibly guilty. Because as the host of this podcast, I'm supposed to know better. Usually I'm pretty good at following the advice I share with you, but this is one domain where I'm really screwing things up.

up. up. And honestly, I don't even know what to do to make my schedule less hectic these days. days. days. But as I always say, when all else fails, you should turn to science. After the break, we'll do just that. You'll hear what feeling this busy does to your mental health and to your relationships. relationships. relationships. And we'll see that having a bit of free time is more valuable for our well-being than our lying minds often think. Right. Got to go. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.

Time affluence is feeling of whether or not we have enough time to do all of the things that we want to do or have to do. This is Ashley Whillans, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of the upcoming book Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life. Ashley is another one of my heroes. Instead of looking at whether we have objectively sort of enough hours in a day, we're looking at subjectively whether people feel like they have enough time. Time affluence is one of my favorite scientific concepts because it's the opposite of what I experience on a near daily basis.

daily basis. daily basis. My calendar never feels open. My subjective feeling is one of extreme busyness. What researchers like Ashley have christened time famine. People today are feeling increasingly pressed for time, increasingly time poor, such that they feel like they have too many things to do and not enough time in the day to do it. And it's interesting because there's also this data suggesting that we objectively have more time today than we used to. So the subjective feelings of time stress are going up while the objective amount of time that we have is actually going up as well.

So why do we fail to notice the extra minutes we all have each day? The reason, according to science, is that nowadays our free time tends to be broken up into tiny chunks or time confetti. So we have more time confetti now than we used to. That leisure time is sporadic, it's scattered because we're constantly connected to our phones. We're trying to do many, many different tasks and our attention is being pulled in many directions. So this feeling of trying to pack in all of this stuff, being pulled in all these directions during our free time can make us feel more pressed for time.

I definitely get the concept of time confetti in my own life. Because even when I get a break, it never feels like a break. I'll be lounging and watching TV and I'll get a stressful text about work. Or I'll be in the middle of an otherwise enjoyable dinner chat when I get this anxious urge to do a quick email check. Even lunch, a time my idle Tom says should be reserved for conversation, that often ends up being a time that I spend alone spend alone spend alone trying to quickly scratch a few things off that to-do list.

Sure, I wind up getting more done. I mean, it feels like I'm being productive and clearing things off my plate. But, Ashley's research has shown that it's taking more of a toll on me than I realize. These feelings of time stress, this time famine, comes at a cost of happiness. In some Gallup World Poll data that we analyzed with 2.5 million Americans, we found that this feeling of time famine had a worse impact on happiness than being unemployed. So, it seems to have dramatic consequences for our subjective well-being.

The problem, though, is that people don't realize the consequences of time poverty are so great. And so, we constantly make individual choices that make our time famine even worse. People who have more job flexibility, more paid vacations in their workplace, are happier with their jobs. They're more satisfied and less likely to leave. But, when you ask people, would you rather have job A, and job A makes more salary, or job B, and job B has more paid vacation and less salary, people always go for job A.

If you've listened to other episodes of The Happiness Lab, you know that many of us equate happiness with having more money. Which means that most of us want to work more and more in order to earn more and more. more. more. But, that trade-off of giving up time for money winds up resulting in less and less time affluence, which often means less and less happiness. It's a pretty stupid strategy, but it's also one that Ashley has found many of us employ all the time. We think that prioritizing money and working a lot is a status symbol.

So, we think if we seem really that's going to confer us higher status, and it's one of the reasons that we don't focus on time, take paid vacation, and instead focus a lot on working. The connection between busyness and status means that even people who have the money to buy a little free time often choose not to do so. Even some of the wealthiest people we've studied, people with $2 million sitting in the bank, bank, bank, uh are still focusing on money at the expense of time.

Ashley's also found that as we feel our days getting fuller and fuller, we don't make time for activities that could reduce our stress, like hanging out with friends or making new ones. We have a paper showing that even just this general prioritization of money over time means that we're less likely to interact with a peer. So, we spend 18% less time interacting. And we know that these small social moments are some of the happiest in our day. These results got me thinking about why I'm so busy.

Ironically, it's not because I'm focused on money or status. It's because I'm focused on people. I wind up saying yes to too many things because I don't want to disappoint anyone. anyone. anyone. Either my colleagues or my students or or even you, dear podcast listener. But putting too much stuff on my plate means becoming even more time famished. I'm seeing lots of people, sure, but am I really spending any quality time with any of them? I explained this jumble of feelings to Ashley. I was surprised that my hero was experiencing pretty much the same thing.

You're titling. You're just literally it feels like survival. I'm having this day-to-day. I just taught two classes and had two hours of office hours. All I'm thinking about is when am I going to drink water? When is my next nap? I don't have the cognitive resources to also think about how am I going to connect with a friend who hasn't been doing very well? Back in the 1970s, researchers John Darley and Daniel Batson ran a test to see why people help others. Was being nice a function of a person's personality personality personality or did it depend on the situation?

To test these questions, they chose a population known for being do-gooders, students at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Seminary. Seminary. Darley and Batson figured that students training to be priests were probably prone to being nice to other people. And so, the researchers told these subjects that they needed to deliver a public sermon about Jesus's the of the Good Samaritan. Samaritan. Samaritan. In this parable, a man is beaten, robbed, and left unconscious on the street. street. street. Several people, including a priest, pass by without stopping. But one person, the Good Samaritan, took pity on the victim.

He helped the man up and even brought him to an inn to eat and rest. The Samaritan, Jesus explains, is the guy we're all supposed to emulate. He's the one that's going to heaven. The seminary students all knew the tale well. well. well. So, having to give a sermon on that topic should have been mildly stressful, but relatively straightforward. And that's when Darley and Batson upped the stakes. the stakes. the stakes. All of the students had to head across campus to another building to give the talk.

talk. talk. One group was told that their sermon would happen later that day, so they had plenty of time to get there. A second group was told that they'd make it in time, but only if they set off immediately. immediately. immediately. But a third group was told that they were already late. They needed to sprint over there right away. And that's when Darley and Batson had a surprise for the men. They basically staged an experimental version of the Good Samaritan story. They hired an actor to pretend to be injured on the ground, who was blocking a narrow part of the route.

The students would literally have to physically step over the actor's writhing body in order to make it past. So, what did a little time famine do to the students' willingness to help? The results were really striking. 63% of the students who had time to spare stopped to help the hurt stranger. Which, honestly, is already pretty bad. That means over a third of trainee priests basically stepped over a guy lying hurt on the street. But what happened when subjects were in a mad hurry? Only 10% of them stopped to help.

90% of the subjects completely ignored an obviously injured person on the street because they were rushing to give a sermon about how Jesus said you should stop to help injured people on the street. street. street. When we're time famished, we become crappy people. crappy people. crappy people. When people are thinking about the economic value of their time, when they're thinking about being hyper-efficient with every second, this comes at a cost of our willingness to take time out of our day to help others, to volunteer, to do something as simple as recycle a piece of scrap paper in the lab, something that takes 10-15 seconds to do.

Ashley actually has experimental data to back up this last point. She had students cut up sheets of paper for a construction project. construction project. construction project. She told them they could either throw their scraps away in a nearby trash can or walk a few feet outside the room to a recycling bin. recycling bin. recycling bin. In this first control condition, 41% of the students opted to recycle. But Ashley also tested another experimental group in which she first had subjects write down how many hours they expected to work after graduation and then calculate their hourly pay rate.

rate. rate. What happened to recycling in this experimental group? experimental group? experimental group? Only 12% made the extra effort required. Policy makers should take note here. Have you ever considered that giving people more time will help them become better, greener citizens? What we really need to do is to solve time poverty so that people can have more cognitive resources and also just a more outward focus so that we're not just simply trying to solve our own time scarcity and get from point A to point B in our lives, but we're able to have these self-transcendent values and think about how can I use my time to benefit others.

Which raises a big question. How can we fight time poverty? What can people like me do to feel a little more time affluent? We'll tackle those important questions when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. I would get up at 8:00 with the kids or 7:30. Then I would sit down in my study at 9:00 and I wouldn't leave until 1:00 p.m. So, I would do four straight hours of work and that was it. Welcome to the typical day of time affluent guru Tom Hodgkinson. Hodgkinson.

Hodgkinson. [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] I was struck that Tom's day involved both less and more idling than I'd expected, if that makes sense. After lunch, I would go into the garden, go for walk, sleep. My children would come back from school, we'd do dinner, I'd have a couple of beers, read books in the evening, go to bed sort of fairly early, 10:00 or 11:00. 11:00. 11:00. That was great and you know, that was a four-hour working day and often took Fridays off Fridays off Fridays off for trips and so on.

So, that was lovely. Tom is super time affluent, but he isn't some bum who never gets anything done. He's an incredibly accomplished writer with six best-selling books. And that doesn't even include his ukulele handbook. ukulele handbook. ukulele handbook. The problem with being an idler actually is that you can end up working quite hard. I mean, I I get a lot of criticism from our readers saying "Well, you seem to work quite hard, Tom, you're cuz you're quite productive." And I think that's because, you know, you give yourself lots of thinking time and then you start having creative ideas and you then you want to carry them out and you know, it takes some work to actually make them happen.

And so, I asked Tom for some advice. Practical tips that would actually work with my busy professor lifestyle. Practical tips, okay. Please, you know, take an hour off for lunch and talk to people. I sheepishly admitted to Tom that I pretty rarely take a lunch break that doesn't involve checking my email. Overwork can drag you backwards. Take your lunch break. A full uninterrupted meal break with proper conversation already was seeming like the stuff of fantasy. But then Tom up the ante with an even more indulgent afternoon activity.

Ideally, have a short nap after lunch. I mean, I personally find that time between 2:00 and 4:00, I mean, I'm completely dead. I I used to get quite depressed. I can't think. I'm just so tired. And then I wake up again at 4:00. Uh, a 2-hour siesta. Yeah, that basically sounds kind of impossible for me. me. me. Tom was horrified when he learned that I had a flight later that day and that I planned to spend most of that travel time working. Travel time is a gift.

In the old days, you couldn't work. We didn't have Wi-Fi and stuff. And so it was a lovely opportunity just to gaze out the window, but you can still do that. Planes, trains, automobiles, you know, sit in the back, stare out the window, unplug, you know, or read a book, a real actual book, and sleep and and and daze. Even walking along the road is supposed to be a sort of self-improving activity because you put your headphones on and plug into some kind of inspirational podcast.

Um, what? I mean, okay, this is a good podcast to listen to, your one. Tom's point isn't to cancel your Happiness Lab subscription. Like, seriously, don't do that. Tom's point is just that we need to find some time when it feels like we're not working or desperately trying to cram things in. Give a gift to yourself of that time. It's completely free. It doesn't cost anything. It could really have incalculable benefits for your mental health. I was so thankful to hear Tom's suggestions. Tom's suggestions. Tom's suggestions.

But realistically, I wasn't totally sure his advice was going to work for my level of time famine. I mean, I can shoot for longer email-free lunches, but napping for hours a day is not really practical for my situation. my situation. my situation. And if I'm being honest, it's also unlikely that I'll leave my laptop totally switched off on my next flight. I started to worry that Tom's recommendations were a bit too advanced for my level of time famine. I needed to start with some beginner tips, sort of a time affluent for dummies kind of thing.

So, I turned to my other hero, Ashley Whillans. She's an academic, just like me. So, I figured that she might have some more applicable advice. As usual, I was in a rush to get straight to the point. So, you're a super busy Harvard professor, um, who teaches about time, which feels a little bit ironic. But my life sometimes feels very ironic, yes. So, how are you actually putting this stuff into effect in your own life? Um, I'm trying and sometimes failing. Yeah, I feel like I'm grasping at straws sometimes to try to try to keep it all together.

It wasn't exactly the guru level of time mastery I was hoping for. But I also admired Ashley's honesty. One thing that I did structurally in my life is I cut my commute time to basically zero. I pay a lot of money in rent, but I can walk to the office. So, I'm not only buying myself time each and every day, but I can also spend that time in ways that are good for happiness, like walking, enjoying the scenery. I take in a lot of sunrises walking across the bridge to work.

And I think that's one thing that I've done that I've noticed has dramatically improved the quality of my life. So, Ashley exchanges money in the form of rent for less time wasted on a dull commute. She also uses her other expenditures in the same way. Like housecleaning, grocery delivery. It turns out that allocating more of your available budget to these services can substantially increase your time affluence. If you spend money in a typical month to outsource disliked tasks to others, therefore buying back some of your time or at least buying more positive moments, we see that that is a good predictor of happiness for people all across the income spectrum, the richest people that we've studied, people living kind of at or even slightly below the poverty line.

Paying someone to do your disliked tasks can also provide a much-needed boost to your social life. When you outsource something you don't like, you not only get to spend more time with people you care about, but you're less thinking about all these other things you have to do while you're socializing. And so, it buys us out of some of this dread, this anticipation of having to come home from a nice social event on the weekend and have a million chores to do before the work week starts.

And we've also started looking at the effects of time-saving services, housecleaning, uh, someone to mow your lawn on relationship satisfaction. And we have some findings suggesting that couples who make a concerted effort to outsource in a typical month experience greater relationship satisfaction because they're less negatively impacted by daily stressors. And that effect on relationship satisfaction is just about as good as having a partner who's a really good listener. All of this sounds great, but I bet some of you are thinking the same thing I was.

was. was. Is this a strategy everyone can use? Or is this just for wealthy Harvard professors who can afford a house cleaner? I get this question a lot, isn't this just for rich people? Most of us listening at least are lucky enough to have some discretionary income at our disposal. So then we want to start thinking, well, if I have $100 a month, $200 a month, $300 a month, how can I start thinking about spending that money in a way that might best promote my happiness?

And there are small things that we can all do around the margins. One example might be hire the neighbor's kid to mow your lawn. That might not cost very much money. Getting takeout. Takeout can be one way of saving time, but interestingly we often don't think about takeout in that way. So we show in some of our studies that some of the happiness benefit of these time-saving purchases that we make on a regular basis, some of that benefit is actually from just thinking that you're saving time and then spending that time in a more deliberate way.

So you could even, if you don't want to change the way that you're spending, sit down and look at your purchases that you make in a typical month and say, "Hey, when I made that takeout purchase, I actually was saving time that I wasn't spending on cooking. What did I do with that time? And next week when I buy that fast food, could I be spending that time I would have spent cooking in a better way?" So part of the benefit is just removing negative tasks that you don't like, and part of the benefit of time-saving is being more deliberate with the free time that you've gained.

The idea of being more deliberate with how we think about our time is critical. Remember, time affluence isn't the objective amount of free time you have, the actual number of open blocks in your calendar. It's your subjective sense that you have some free time. And that means you can do a lot to boost your sense of time affluence, even if in reality, you can't really open up that much actual free time. It's just the sense of giving yourself a bit of a break that makes all the difference.

Even if the amount of time you actually gain is small. I saw this firsthand in my happiness class when I first introduced my Yale students to the concept of time affluence. affluence. affluence. With hard classes, demanding extracurriculars, and an intense social life, Yale students feel incredibly time famished pretty much all the time. So, I decided to give them a booster shot of time affluence by surprising them with a canceled class one spring day. day. day. Students came to lecture expecting to be in class for an hour and 15 minutes.

But when they arrived, my teaching assistants were handing out flyers explaining that I was giving students a bit of time affluence by canceling class that day. that day. that day. The students were ecstatic. They finally had a bit of free time. Some even started screaming and jumping up and down. Others just seemed incredibly relieved. One woman even burst into tears announcing it was the first free hour she's had all semester. But my students' joy demonstrates this important feature of time affluence. It doesn't take all that much to feel incredibly good.

incredibly good. incredibly good. My Yalie's were only given an hour and 15 minutes free. But at the time, it felt like years. Many of them even used that free hour to do something really fun. They hung out with friends over bubble teas or went for a short hike. Which shows one of the most important features of using our time affluence well. In the rare cases when we get free time, we need to use it wisely. This is something I really struggle with. Because I do get little blasts of free time confetti here and there.

There are There are of unexpected changes as an academic. Meetings canceled, talks that wrap up earlier than predicted, appointments with people who never show. I usually use those free moments to do a quick social media check or dig into my email. email. email. But Ashley argues that I should plan to use those little time windfalls a lot more effectively. more effectively. more effectively. How can we start claiming back some of these windfalls to really think about them in this more deliberate way so that these small pockets of time that we do receive in our everyday lives feel more like a gain and therefore might be more likely to increase our happiness.

Have you done this in your own life? Are there specific tips you use when you have a meeting canceled or have a small time windfall? Yeah, so I actually have started to keep a time windfall list of if I have small pockets of 5 minutes and 10 minutes, what are some life things, not work things, not emails, those will always be there, but some small positive life things that I can do with those windfalls. Send a letter of gratitude, call my mom, uh reach out to a friend from grad school I haven't talked to in a while.

And I write those in my agenda and I don't always get to all of them, but I do get to some of them and I think that doing this research has made me a little bit more strategic about not squandering the small moments that all of us find ourselves with on a daily basis. basis. basis. Making this episode hasn't completely cured my sense of time famine, but it has helped a lot. I've started my own time windfall list. I want to connect more with friends I haven't seen in a while and take more opportunities to express gratitude to the people I care about.

I also want to take time to be more mindful. And so I'm going to try to use some of those free 15-minute blocks for a quick meditation and some deep breaths. deep breaths. deep breaths. And in honor of Tom, I promise to spend at least a few minutes gazing out the window on my next flight. But most of all making this episode has caused me to realize that I'm not helping the people I care about by packing my schedule to the brim. Hearing the science has caused me to reflect on the negative impact my time famine is having on the people I care about most.

about most. about most. It also made me worry about the person I could become if I don't carve out a bit more free time. So Happiness Lab listeners, I'm making a public commitment to all of you that I plan to prioritize my own time affluence, and I hope you will, too. As I said before, you don't need to unsubscribe from your favorite podcast. Seriously, don't do that. Even just making the most of small time windfalls can bump up your mood. And maybe, just maybe, it might even make you a better person.